


Watching

by thequidditchpitch_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Ficlet, Hogwarts Era, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-28
Updated: 2007-12-28
Packaged: 2018-10-27 08:16:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10805289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequidditchpitch_archivist/pseuds/thequidditchpitch_archivist
Summary: Hermione sees the kiss between Harry and Ginny in HBP.  Sort of angsty.  Well...ambiguouslyangsty.





	Watching

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).

(Originally posted on June 17th, 2006)  
  
  
This was written for a fanfict00bs' drabblethon.  The request was: I would love to know what Hermione was really thinking during and after the H/G kiss in HBP. What did Hermione do after Harry and Ginny left the common room? Of course, I want this to be H/Hr in some way--not a Hermione who's happy about H/G. Thanks!  
  
<hr>

  
  
Sometimes she wondered if she should have been an owl.  Or maybe that she had even been an owl in a previous life.  But that smacked of mysticism, and she certainly couldn’t have any of that, thank you very much.  
  
But the fact remained that she was an acute <i>watcher</i>.  She observed.  She deduced.  She theorized.  That was something Ron would never understand about her.  He always made cracks as if her intelligence was purely the product of <i>reading</i>.  For goodness sakes, if that had been the case, she would have been put in Ravenclaw.  No.  She knew that her gift was not just her voracious appetite for studying books, but her appetite for studying <i>life</i>.  Ron might have been a great strategist when it came to chess, static pieces on a game board with no minds of their own.  But when it came to reading events and people?  He was clueless.    
  
And it wasn’t that he was uncaring, or even that he was a total prat, as she might have once claimed.  His brain just didn’t work that way.  It wasn’t that he had the emotional range of a teaspoon. It was more that he had the subtlety of a mallet.  It was a quality he lacked, and was therefore unable to recognize.  Honestly, he wasn’t even aware that she had become the most pitiable girl in Gryffindor tower, supposedly pining away over his relationship with Lavender.  The absurdity of which  only made her<i> more</i> snappish, which in turn led to <i>more</i> whispers of her supposed jealousy.    
  
Just thinking about it all made her groan from her window seat in the common room.  Of course, no one heard her, for they were all too busy celebrating Gryffindor’s win.  As her eyes quietly skimmed the room, she couldn’t help but grin at Ron and Ginny’s enthusiasm.  But as she continued to watch the younger girl, she could feel the smile slipping from her face.  
  
After all, she knew what was going to happen, sooner or later.  All those years of Ginny asking for advice about Harry were going to pay off for the youngest Weasley.  Hermione <i>knew</i> Harry, and Ginny had been smart enough to mine that reservoir of knowledge for all it had been worth.  And of course Hermione had told the truth and given Ginny advice.  What else could she have done?  
  
She forced herself to look away and let her eyes focus on the clouds as they skittered across the pewter sky.  She gave a slight sigh as she thought about him and how things were going to change.  Unlike Ron, Harry had never needed her to spoon-feed everything to him.  Whereas she would have to talk at Ron for hours, she had been able to communicate with Harry in simple glances.  
  
But that had been before this past year.  Everything was so turned-around.  Their connection was so much weaker, at times almost tenuous.  Was it all just hormones?  She frowned as she idly twirled a lock of her wild hair around her finger.  As much as she would have liked to think that something as mundane as <i>puberty</i> couldn’t be such an obstacle, she had to acknowledge that it was the likeliest culprit.  After all, the way Harry had stared at Ginny… Her throat constricted a little as she recalled the many times that she had watched him watching her.  And then, of course, she had to acknowledge the fact that she <i>did</i> watch him.  More than ever.  As if she could somehow bridge the gap that had begun to grow between them, simply by being more and more aware of his presence.  
  
“Okay, that’s enough self-pity for one day,” she muttered to herself.  She forced herself to get up from her seat and briskly walked over to a group of students who were merrily re-enacting key plays from the earlier match.    
  
At that moment, the door opened, and there he was.  
  
And she watched it all happen.  He scanned the room and focused on <i>her</i>.  Ginny caught his gaze and ran to him.  And before Hermione could quite believe it, they were kissing.  She heard a few snickers and a lot of good-natured ribbing and some catcalls, all forcing her mind to attention.  She should be ready for this.  She knew it had been coming.  She had watched all the signs unfolding.  
  
Finally aware of his surroundings, Harry broke away from Ginny’s kiss.  And he looked for her.  And he found her with the smile she had pasted onto her face… and kept on her face.  She smiled till she thought her cheeks would break.  She would be positively <i>beaming</i> for them all to see.  To be mocked about Ron?  That had been simply an irritation.  After all, it hadn’t really mattered.  But <i>this</i> time?  No.  No one would see anything to pity.    
  
And he hadn’t seen anything, either, she realized with a pang that felt too disturbingly like disappointment.  He and Ginny soon ducked out for their own celebration and Hermione moved back to her window seat.   Looking out over the twilight.  Watching.

 

The End. 


End file.
